Category: Writings

When I first laid eyes on the guest column Paul Rieckhoff wrote about “American Sniper,” I thought I’d read the byline wrong. This has to have been written by the Department of Defense, I thought, before scrolling back up. When I saw that the founder and chief executive officer of America’s largest corporately-sponsored veterans’ organization did indeed pen this post, it concerned me on a deep level. How could a veteran of his stature speak this favorably about a movie that many of my fellow veterans found completely disgusting, even propaganda-like in nature? The only unifying factor I found was that Rieckhoff and the DoD both seem to share a propensity for cleverly exploiting veterans. Here are six ways in which Rieckhoff, like the DoD, supports the oversimplification of the Iraq War and its effects on veterans and Iraqis. …

I just read Raul Felix’s article about the division of Generation Y (which is drawn, the author asserts, between those who are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and those who aren’t), and although I thought Felix made some extremely salient points, I am of the opinion that another, more specific division needs to be made. I’m referring to the particularly awkward division between women veterans and women who have never been in the military – the division that leads to women like me getting out of the Army and finding it nearly impossible to relate to 99% of other American women. You might think that’s an exaggeration, but when one considers that only 1% of Americans serve in the U.S. military at any given time, and that an even smaller percentage of us are women, it seems fairly accurate. …